You're still with me?
Do one more?
Yeah, we do.
OK.
This is a little longer.
Do you want 35 pages?
I'm only kidding.
But I was asked to read this.
So it's the opening poem of my last book.
It's called "A Panic that Can Still Come Upon Me",
panic being one of the few topics I'm an expert in.
At any rate, the title comes, I had written the first canto
this is in five parts.
And I had written it.
And then I went to Des Moines at the Art Institute
and I saw this canvas by the painter, Jess Collins, who
was the poet Robert Duncan's life partner,
and he's an amazing collage artist.
And he worked in three ways.
He did collage and he did illustrations
where he would paint illustrations
from books, things that usually aren't subjects for painting.
And he would build it up and then carve the paint
in an impasto fashion.
But the third way that's interesting
here is he did something called salvage work.
And I'm interested in salvage poetry as a form of rescue,
if you think of the horrific tradition.
But salvage is much more compelling to me
than "something that's total like salvation."
That's something I can't manage.
But salvage is something, that's a work that we
can do that we can rescue pieces of each other's songs,
things that are lost, lost histories, fables, games,
people.
At any rate, I found this work, which is a salvage work.
And what Jess would do is he go to a junk shop,
go to a garage sale and find a painting by a quote,
like, "Sunday painter."
And then he would take that canvas home
and then he would improve it.
He would add these other elements to it.
So the text I was working with here
that I wanted to improve during the Bush Administration
was the New York Times.
So many of the images here come out of the Times.
That's just enough.
Do you even hear people explain their poems.
Exactly.
This doesn't explain anything, but sounds good.
OK.
This one's a little longer.
And I'll end with this one.
All right.
A panic that can still come upon me.
If today and today I am calling aloud,
if I break into pieces of glitter
on asphalt bits of sun, the din.
If tires whine on wet pavement, everything humming.
If we find we are still in motion
and have arrived in Zeno's thought,
like if sunshine hits marble and the sea lights up we might
know we were loved, are loved.
If flames and harvests, the enchanted plain.
If our wishes are met with dirt and thyme,
thistle, oil, heirloom, and basil or the end result
is worry, chaos and if "I should know better."
If our loves are anointed with missiles, Apache fire,
Tomahawks.
Did we follow the tablets the pilgrims suggested?
If we ask that every song touch its origin
just once and the years engulfed.
If problems of identity confound sages, derelict philosophers,
administrators, who can say I am found,
if this time you, all of it, this time now.
If nothing save Saturdays at the metro and if rain
falls sidelong in the platz doorways, onto mansard routes.
If enumerations of the fall and if falling,
cities rocked with gas fires at dawn.
Can you rescind the ghost's double nakedness
hungry and waning if children, soldiers, children,
taken down in schools, if burning fuel?
Who can't say they have seen this
and can we sing this if in the aurora's reflecting the sea,
gauze touching the breast.
Too bad for you, beautiful singer,
unadorned by laurel child of thunder and scapegoat alike.
If the crowd in the mind becoming
crowded in streets and villages, and trains
run next to the freeway.
If exit is merely a sign.
Two.
It isn't all right to want just anything all the time,
be specific sky.
I can read the narrow line above the hills.
The day unbraids its pretty light and I am here to see it.
This must be all there is right now in the world.
There are things larger than understanding,
things we know cannot be held in the mind.
If the sun throbs like a drum every five minutes,
what can we do with this, the 100,000 years
it takes a photon to reach the surface of the sun, eight
minutes to hit our eyes?
If every afternoon gravity and fire
it's like that here, undressed, unwound.
Three.
If today and today I am speaking to you,
or if you/I whisper, touch, explain.
If they/you hate those phrases, if we
struggle to get to the thing, the body and the other noises.
If a W stumbles here even in private,
there was this man we said everywhere between us,
if speech can free us.
If summer fall winter spring, the broadcast day
spins round my head it's grin stuck out there
when I am a tiger inside the DMZ or if I
am a tiger man if no one believes what I see.
If behind the grail and new elm the pink light saying,
welcome earthling, my biography as an atom picture of my smile,
is this what my body said?
If I forget my notebook, if these gaps I feel
are also the gaps I am built inside, thinking it's all good.
If the sun sharp and hot and still but deep and clarifying,
walking its boulevards, if bound by the most ignoble cords,
if squatting in time.
If every day a struggle, the blue copse speaking sky
arching over nothing, uh-huh.
If every struggle ice-cream truck
tinkle interrupting the cosmological,
if every day strife, every day sprechen Sie, if every day uh,
is this what my body says my buddy said?
And if we die and begin to lose consciousness and the flag.
There was this man we said this W here even in private.
I said in my letter, if I see you again.
Four.
A branch and the scent of pine in summer,
the bridge and the water in the creek, the stones and the sound
of water, the creek and my body when
hair and water flowed over me.
If I am a bridge I am standing on, thinking,
saying goodbye to myself.
When I stood by the water in life thinking of my life,
pine boughs the hill next to water.
The sun in the creek on the bridge on my hair
and pine boughs and wind mixed with water,
one crow skating by, the life of water,
life of thinking and moving, a crow
passes by this place in the mind, on my eyes.
Five.
So the vocalise day imprinted a sound.
I'm not stupid.
I too unwind in the most circuitous fashion.
I undress water directly.
Who hasn't seen unnumbered sparrows
enter the silhouette of a tree?
Why shouldn't I come in from the cold?
Sure, there is the monument, the grass and the plate
inside it grows on.
If the answer becomes sun then sun inside, normal things, OK.
The ribbon above our heads is not a banner.
Scaling this leafy architecture, we
say wind, night sky, moon, clouds,
stars if silver stands for syncopation indeed,
symphonic dailiness is felt order.
I have felt it at the back of me,
light on the table, the book open.
If we struggle for a name, if colors change,
if mood is connected to naming, to color.
If say a ship's in deep water and a piece of sky
empties the mind or when I was frigate-tossed.
If I wanted to go all over a word and live inside its name,
so be it.
There is my body and the idea of my body.
The surf breaking and the picture of a wave.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]